A wrecking ball ( a little long, but important).

US Secretary of Education Betsy Devos is arguably the worst Secretary of Education in living memory, favoring private religious schools and appearing to disadvantage the victims of sexual harassment. Among other things.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—passed was by Congress in March. $13.5 billion was allocated to K-12 schools. Using a Title I formula, the funding is intended mainly for schools in high-poverty areas.

But in the guidance sent to states, Betsy DeVos made it clear she wants to give just as much to private educational institutions, using $180 million of the CARES cash for a “microgrant” (read: voucher) program to assist with private school tuition. It bears repeating that most private schools in the US (78 percent by some estimates) are religious.

DeVos was recently interviewed on SiriusXM radio by New York’s archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Referring to her agenda during the coronavirus pandemic and to “a particularly passionate dream” of hers, Dolan asked if it was to “utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to send them to faith-based schools.” Her answer: “Yes, absolutely.”

Back in November 2018 Devos announced her intention to restructure Title IX. Part of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX states that: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

The proposed changes would redefine how school campuses respond to sexual assault claims and redefine sexual harassment and the conditions that would obligate a Title IX funding recipient to respond to sexual harassment claims. Devos stated that these changes were intended to strengthen legal protections for the accused. (Note: not the victims. Ed)

When the public period for commenting on Title IX opened up for the proposed changes it was for one day only. Nonetheless, approximately 100,000 comments came in, indicating what an important issue this was. Later,this last May, amid the chaos caused by covid 19, when public schools, colleges and universities were wrestling with safety and online teaching, Devos
chose to announce the final Title IX changes, giving the educational community a little over a month to implement the entirety of the proposals.

The changes include (but are not limited to) redefining sexual assault as a repeated action, and allowing for a real time cross examination of the victim by a third party ( plus other rules in favor or sexual predators).

The backlash was immediate, and went far beyond the unprecedented turnaround time required of educational institutions and school systems. The changes were touted as an attempt to be “fairer and better protect accused students,” but civil rights advocates believe it is at the expense of sexual assault survivors. Of concern are the narrowed definition of sexual assault, suggesting it must happen more than once for a student to be allowed to report it as assault; the cross-examination of both students by third party participants; and removing the requirement of colleges to address off-campus assault claims.

The effect of the changes is to make it difficult for victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault to continue their educations, and this amid a global pandemic. Proponents of these rule changes, believe that colleges are not appropriate places to ensure due process and that sexual assault claims should be left to the police. However, colleges have a responsibility to their students to provide a safe and secure learning environment. By stating that colleges have no place in providing due process is perplexing, as institutions of higher learning are structured around rules and guidelines that students are required to adhere to upon admission. By stating that educational systems shouldn’t act when their rules and guidelines are broken would defeat the purpose of creating rules and guidelines in the first place.

Betsy DeVos’s Title IX rule rewrite is an attack on the civil rights of the most vulnerable people in sexual assault cases. Just as with her funneling of millions in federal coronavirus relief to private religious schools and voucher schemes — money that was intended for public schools. Her priorities here are not dubious, they’re disgraceful.

(The above is an edited version of articles appearing in The Humanist. Writers were Margie Delao, the Social Justice and Policy Assistant at the American Humanist Association; and Jennifer Bardi, Senior Editor of The Humanist. 23 May 2020).

My comment: The overall level of education is second-rate as it is, but preferring private schools is a clear discrimination against those who cannot afford private education, e.g African Americans and Latinos. And who is to say that private education is better than public when the teachers are drawn from the same reservoir of talent, or otherwise?

A Walk in the Woods. A poem

I walk in wonder through a wood
Like some great temple, moist and still,
Bid fair to meet some forest god
Or spirit of the Spring’s new growth,
Maybe just perched upon a bough,
Or peeping round some mossy root.
“Do you, good stranger, come in peace,
Or will you jar our ageless calm?”

In churches bells hang high on towers,
But in this holy, pagan place
Bells upon bells in violet blue
Have carpeted the wildwood floor.
They burst upon the woodscape, fade,
Then, glory done, can rest a year.
No temple architect could match
This bluebell sea in stone or tile.

Beeches, like pillars of a nave,
Graceful, grey-green, smooth and clean
Hold high above a canopy,
A trembling green and yellow shade…..
When suddenly the lingering cloud
Above us parts, the sun breaks through,
Small shaftlets dappling light on bark
And drops of rain on sapling leaves.

The May shower ended, humid air
Hangs languorous in the awakened wood,
Silent I move in sheer delight,
Uttering a pagan prayer.

(Robert Hanrott, May 2004)

A diet to reverse type-2 diabetes

Old news, but people may be able to “cure” themselves of type-2 diabetes by going on a radical 800-calorie-a-day soup and shake diet. Previous research has indicated that the disease can be temporarily reversed in this way. Now a study has suggested that the recovery can be permanent – provided the weight loss is sufficiently dramatic, and maintained.

Scientists at Newcastle and Glasgow Universities tracked 298 diabetics who were put on an ultra-low-calorie food-replacement diet for between three to five months. After a year, 46% of them were in remission, and after two, 70% of this group were still in remission. Those who were still in remission after two years had lost an average of 15.5kg (two-and-a-half stone) initially and had put 4.3kg back on after a year, while those who relapsed after a year had lost 12kg initially and regained 7.1kg. The researchers think that dramatic weight loss reduces levels of fat in the pancreas, allowing it to recover the ability to produce insulin. (The Week, 23 March 2019).

My comment: I was pre-diabetic myself until my doctor read the riot act. I cut down on sweet things and took exercise much more seriously. At one point I weighed over 200 lbs, with an A1C of 6.2; now I have been 160 lbs. for several years, with an A1C of under 6. One can do it if one really wants to!

Mindfulness and meditation: are they good for you?

Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety.

Mindfulness (paying close attention to your own thoughts) and other types of meditation are usually seen as simple stress-relievers – but they can sometimes leave people worse off, worsening depression and anxiety.
About one in 12 people who try meditation experience an unwanted negative effect, usually a worsening in depression or anxiety, or even the onset of these conditions for the first time, according to the first systematic review of the evidence. “For most people it works fine but it has undoubtedly been overhyped and it’s not universally benevolent,” says Miguel Farias at Coventry University in the UK, one of the researchers.

There are many types of meditation, but one of the most popular is mindfulness, in which people pay attention to the present moment, focusing on either their own thoughts and feelings or external sensations. It is recommended by several National Health Service bodies in the UK as a way of reducing depression relapses in people who have experienced the condition several times.

Enthusiasm for meditation may partly stem from a growing awareness of the side effects of antidepressant medicines and the difficulties some people report in stopping taking them. There have been some reports of people experiencing worse mental health after starting meditation but, it is unclear how often this happens.

Farias’s team combed through medical journals and found 55 relevant studies. Once the researchers had excluded those that had deliberately set out to find negative effects, they worked out the prevalence of people who experienced harms within each study and then calculated the average, adjusted for the study size, a common method in this kind of analysis.

They found that about 8 per cent people who try meditation experience an unwanted effect, anything from an increase in anxiety up to panic attacks. They also found instances of psychosis or thoughts of suicide. The figure of 8 per cent may be an underestimate, as many studies of meditation record only serious negative effects or don’t record them at all

Katie Sparks, a chartered psychologist and a member of the British Psychological Society, says the figure could have been pushed up by people trying out meditation because of undiagnosed anxiety or depression. “Meditation has been found to help people to relax and refocus and help them both mentally and physically,” she says.

But sometimes when people are trying to still their thoughts, the mind can “rebel”, she says. “It’s like a backlash to the attempt to control the mind, and this results in an episode of anxiety or depression,” she says. This doesn’t mean people should stop trying the technique, she says, but instead should opt for guided meditation sessions, led by a teacher or an app with a recorded narration, which she believes is safer. “The current study could stop people participating in something which can be of benefit in the right context,” she says.
(Journal reference: Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, Clare Wilson, 19 Oct 2020).

My comment: What I call “my peace” is actually meditation and is very calming – and Epicurean. I sit there, eyes shut, reciting the words “peace”, “calm”, “relax”, tuning out altogether – and the stress falls away. But then everyone has his own way of attaining ataraxia.

Religion and prosperity

It is well documented that less religious nations tend to be more prosperous. This is most true of the advanced democracies, but also usually holds elsewhere – see how officially atheistic China outperforms more pious India.
The trend tends to hold up within countries too: the most irreligious US states are better off than the most theistic. And over time, the global rise in nonreligion parallels that of the middle class. The big debate is not whether mass nontheism is better for societies than belief in the gods, but why the connection exists. A new study attempts to answer this. (Science Advances, doi.org/gdtmtn).

One possibility is that the better people feel they are doing, the less they feel the need to seek the aid and comfort of deities. Consumerism also converts many from frugal, pious churchgoers into irreligious materialists. In this case, religion is merely the victim of modernity. Another idea is that secularisation precedes and even drives socioeconomic gain. The latest paper backs this idea, using analysis of socioeconomic patterns in the 1900s, when theism really started to nosedive.

It finds that in most nations, and the planet as a whole, secularisation ran ahead of socioeconomic gains. It makes a good case, but I wonder if the measurements of secularisation and socioeconomics it uses are sufficient in scope to tell the horse from the cart in this way. And it is notable that the rapid rise in US nonreligion in the past decade or so, from 30 per cent to 40 per cent, is long after economic modernity.

Ultimately, the analysis suggests that the rise in personal and societal freedoms affects dogmatic spiritualistic religion (the extreme sects, American evangelicals etc) while also promoting capitalism, which tends to make lives better. Add the fast-growing set of nontheistic parents producing nonreligious children, and it looks like a potent feedback.

While we can argue over the details, the analysis is yet another science-based blow to the idea that religion is inherent and vital to individuals and societies. Instead, a world afflicted with religious strife needs to know that there is not a single example of a modern democracy that is highly religious and highly successful.

(This article appeared in print under the headline “Beyond belief” in Science Advances, and in The Week. Gregory Paul is an independent US scientist, author and palaeozoologist).

My comment: I believe one can be kind, thoughtful, generous, respectful, polite, forgiving, a good citizen and neighbor, and (hopefully) good natured without the intervention of a deity and without spending Sunday mornings in church. I personally support the absolute right of anyone to espouse organized religion if that offers peace and reassurance – just don’t sit in judgement of others.